Introduction: Ignited by the persistent health inequalities many cities and neighbourhoods, the ‘Healthy and Happy The Hague’ network in the Netherlands wanted to gain insight in how prevention and... Show moreIntroduction: Ignited by the persistent health inequalities many cities and neighbourhoods, the ‘Healthy and Happy The Hague’ network in the Netherlands wanted to gain insight in how prevention and health promotion could become successful in one deprived neighbourhood, Moerwijk. Methods: The cycle of Look-Think-Act of Participatory Action Research was used in which both citizens and professionals got involved from the start. Besides interviews, field notes were analysed, visualised and discussed in several rounds of focus groups. Results: Thematic analysis yielded seven themes: Healthy Eating and Exercise, Healthy Money, Healthy Mind, Healthy Relationships, Growing up healthy, Healthy Environment and Healthy Collaboration. During sessions around combination of themes, eight initiatives were co-created by citizens and professionals together, improving the feeling of ownership and interconnectedness. Discussion and conclusion: This PAR sheds a light on the mismatch between the system world’s solutions for individuals and the living world’s needs for solutions for the collective. Findings provides a better insight into the social, political, and cultural mechanisms and processes that influence clustering and interaction of health conditions. PAR is a promising process of citizens and professionals working together is an excellent way to learn about the conditions under which people experience health inequalities, and how to combat these inequalities. Show less
This study focuses on pre-service teachers’ views of the conditions that foster their participatory action research practices in secondary schools and on how these conditions can inform the... Show moreThis study focuses on pre-service teachers’ views of the conditions that foster their participatory action research practices in secondary schools and on how these conditions can inform the development of a teacher education program for a participatory approach. By using the Theory of Practice Architectures as an analytical lens, eight cases of participatory action research projects were studied at two interrelated sites of pre-service teachers’ learning: the teacher education institute and the internship school. Findings shed light on the conditions for fostering participatory action research practices in a teacher education context in terms of three kinds of arrangements, i.e. cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political. Based on the findings, a set of 17 principles for supporting participatory research practices is presented that can be used to assess the viability of preservice teachers’ participatory action research within a teacher education program, and that also supports a well-aligned institute-school collaboration. Show less